By Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go po­lice say they are ready to de­liv­er a safe and se­cure Car­ni­val 2025, with more than 150 ad­di­tion­al of­fi­cers de­ployed and strict se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures in place for the week­end’s fes­tiv­i­ties.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent for the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion, Earl Elie, said this year’s cel­e­bra­tion is ex­pect­ed to be the biggest yet.

“This is the fourth edi­tion and the largest so far, based on re­ports com­ing in,” Elie said. “Thou­sands of peo­ple are al­ready head­ing to the is­land. On Caribbean Air­lines alone, we have ap­prox­i­mate­ly 23,000 per­sons ex­pect­ed to ar­rive for Car­ni­val—and that doesn’t in­clude the fer­ry ser­vice.”

To man­age the in­flux, Elie said ex­tra man­pow­er has been re­quest­ed from Trinidad.

“We have in ex­cess of 150 of­fi­cers com­ing from Trinidad to lend a hand in To­ba­go. We al­so have a very large con­tin­gent from the De­fence Force to give us the as­sis­tance that we need. So we an­tic­i­pate a safe and se­cure Car­ni­val.”

He warned that law en­force­ment will be tak­ing a tough stance. “There will be a ze­ro-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy dur­ing this pe­ri­od. Our man­date is sim­ple—to en­sure safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty for the peo­ple of To­ba­go and for vis­i­tors and trav­ellers alike,” he said.

Elie re­vealed that of­fi­cers have al­ready seized sev­er­al il­le­gal firearms ahead of the fes­tiv­i­ties.

“To date, we have re­moved 17 firearms from To­ba­go. Among those are four ri­fles; the oth­ers are pis­tols,” he said.

He al­so is­sued a stern mes­sage to any­one con­sid­er­ing car­ry­ing weapons to Car­ni­val events.

“Leave your weapons, leave your knives, leave your ice picks for the pur­pose that they were de­signed. Ice picks were de­signed to chuck ice,” Elie said.

Po­lice are al­so urg­ing rev­ellers and res­i­dents to act re­spon­si­bly, know their lim­its, dri­ve safe­ly, and re­main vig­i­lant.

To­ba­go Car­ni­val runs from to­day through Sun­day, fea­tur­ing Pan and Pow­der tonight, J’Ou­vert to­mor­row morn­ing, and cul­mi­nat­ing with the Pa­rade of the Bands on Sun­day.

Even as the po­lice pre­pare for a safe Car­ni­val, lo­cal busi­ness­es say To­ba­go con­tin­ues to lose vis­i­tors due to on­go­ing trans­port de­lays.

Pres­i­dent of the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion, Regi­nald MacLean, said the is­land’s room oc­cu­pan­cy could have been much high­er if air and sea trans­port had been bet­ter man­aged.

“Oc­cu­pan­cy could be plen­ty, plen­ty bet­ter — but if you can’t get peo­ple to the is­land, what are we go­ing to do?” he said.

He not­ed that ho­tels in west­ern To­ba­go, where most Car­ni­val events are con­cen­trat­ed, are far­ing bet­ter than those in oth­er parts of the is­land.

“Down in the west, be­cause Car­ni­val is in the west, it’s not bad,” he said.

How­ev­er, MacLean said To­ba­go con­tin­ues to face the same chal­lenges every year.

“We’re back to that peren­ni­al prob­lem—flights, flights, flights; seabridge, seabridge, seabridge,” he said. “They take too long to make those de­ci­sions, and that’s ex­act­ly what’s hap­pen­ing this year.”

He added that sev­er­al vis­i­tors have al­ready can­celled their book­ings be­cause of flight short­ages.

“You’re go­ing to have a lot of can­cel­la­tions be­cause of the lack of flights,” he said.

MacLean al­so ar­gued that To­ba­go can­not grow its Car­ni­val prod­uct with­out bet­ter for­ward plan­ning.

“If you want to get in­ter­na­tion­al peo­ple to come here, you have to put these things on way in ad­vance and get peo­ple to our is­land ear­ly,” he said.

He ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that lit­tle at­ten­tion has been paid to the is­land’s east.

“There’s noth­ing on the east for Car­ni­val, which I’m a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed about,” he said. “We have to re-look at some­thing for the Rox­bor­ough area and try to boost that, be­cause oc­cu­pan­cy there is slow—again, be­cause peo­ple can’t get here.”